Tag Archive for "bird"
Some really worrying news from Britain. According to an article by The Telegraph some of Britain’s well known birds are in danger of dieing out. The species that have seen a dramatic fall in their populations are cuckoo, turtle dove, grey partidge and corn bunting, but there are reports saying that bird species all over the world are threatened.
The main reasons for this is believed to be agriculture, logging (habitat destruction) and invasive species.
Birds can also be seen on as barometer of how the state if the nature really is. Declining bird populations is a really bad sign about the state of the nature in general.
I hope we are able to stop this decline as birds are a very important part of the nature. Just think about going for a walk in the woods without hearing any bird chirps. That would be a very sad day.
A new study done with data from the last 25 years in England show that migrating birds seem to move further north in Europe. The researchers looked at 42 rare bird species in Britain and some of the birds that was rarely seen in the south of Britain has been spotted more often. These birds include the Dartford warbler, Cirl bunting, little egret and Cetti’s warbler. Other species, like the fieldfare, redwing or Slavonian grebe, that are more common in Britain saw a decrease in their numbers. The researchers filtered out other factors that could mess up with the observations.
The study done by Durham University, Cambridge University and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds clearly show that there is clear relation with higher temperatures and the migration of birds. Butterflies and birds are species that early adopt to climate changes so this study show that there really is global warming.
This means that I might see new bird species here in Northern Norway in the future. I’m a bit of birdwatcher so it will be cool to see new species, but I don’t want human made global warming to destroy the arctic ecosystem.
Some not so good news from England. According to an article on news.bbc.co.uk the biggest puffin colony in England has seen an unexpected decline in numbers. The colony on the Farne Islands has dropped by a third during the last five years and it is puzzling the researches since they was expecting an increase in the population this year.
The puffins seem to die during the eight months they are out on the sea and there needs to be done more research to discover what is really happening on the North Sea.
I haven’t heard any reports about the status of the puffin colonies here in Norway, but they have been very up and down the last years. In my non-scientific opinion we need to stop fishing the small fish that the puffin and much of the other birds and larger fish eat. If we remove big parts of their main food sources how are they expected to survive? This might be the reason the population of puffins in England is decreasing.
We should keep our greedy hands off this part of the ecosystem so we wont cause a total collapse.
Here is a picture from my photoblog of an Atlantic puffin that I met out on the sea during the winter in 2007. Hope to see more of these beautiful birds as they are pretty rare in my part of Northern Norway.
